"I'm not a racist, like my dad, but I think Blue UFOs and people who fire curvy lasers simply shouldn't exist"
-Patchy Squad, 2009-2025

Now, let's get into review itself: it's a 12th Touhou game,
With main features being Sanae appearing for first time as playable character and the *cough cough* mechanic made around UFOs, which is the only way to obtain resources besides stage 1up/spellcard drops on stage 4, Full Power/1.00 Power drops on stage 6, and a life piece you get after defeating bosses/midbosses.

The way UFOs work is simple:
On stages, specific enemies will drop UFOs upon getting destroyed.
There are 2 types of UFOs: static and cycling ones.
Static ones stay on screen without changing colors, as their type name implies, until they get off-screen or get picked up by playerr
Cycling ones go through the color cycle of "Blue > Green > Red" until they get off-screen or get picked up by the player.
You need 3 UFOs of same color or 1 UFO of each color to summon a large UFO, that stays on screen for 10 seconds, and drops resources upon collecting enough resources/getting destroyed.
This is why you see enemies in this game sometimes dropping a gensokyo worth of Power/Point items on getting destroyed too.

Red UFO - 1 health piece upon getting filled/destroyed
Green UFO - 1 bomb piece upon getting destroyed, spell upon getting filled
Blue UFO - score
Flashing UFO - spawned after grabbing 1 UFO of each color, swaps Power with Score items, and vice versa.

Picking up wrong UFO will make it replace the 2nd one you had, as well as force you to restart the process of getting 3 UFOs of same color, meaning that when you're aiming towards one specific color, a wrong UFO becomes an additional projectile, which is why most fans call UFO a "Frustrating game".
UFOs fly around the screen everywhere except the bottom part, meaning that if you want to avoid getting wrong color at cost of reduced mobility, you can hug the bottom part of screen until it either disappears or you feel like it's safe enough to move.
Also, upon getting destroyed, UFO will make bullets stop appearing for a while, which can help a lot with UFO chains on stage 4

Difficulty:
It is, indeed, one of the hardest games to 1cc. Patterns can sometimes be brutal, and UFOs requiring you to risk it to get 2 life pieces/bomb + bomb fragment with a 10 second timer that increases amount of pressure put on player don't make things any better. in fact, due to this, most of your deaths happen while trying to get to that one specific UFO you need, that suddenly changed it's color as you approached it.
And did i forgot to tell? instead of usual 3 bombs per life standard, you get only 2, which will continue in TD and will be brought back to "3 bombs per life" in DDC.
And did i forgot to mention, that stage 5 boss fires curvy lasers at you, which not only are fast, but also hard to predict where exactly they go, alongside 3 of his/her spells focusing on limiting your movement? And how Kogasa's final spell is literally just "Bomb it", and how the Rensenware final boss has a survival spell on normal or higher?
90% of spells seem to be RNG based too, so you can't really consistently capture them via relying on memory.
Yes, this game is this hard, even with possibility of reaching max lives on stage 4:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3467473724

Shot Types:

ReimuA - Needles that have light spread while unfocused, and no spread while focused. Bomb is alright and needles are good against bosses, but this shot type will heavily struggle during late game.
Also, she's the only shot type i cleared this game with:
https://youtu.be/xVG3PPf_Ozo?si=ajt1_hz9wwQK3kZD

ReimuB - Homing amulets that don't do that much damage, but allow to go through stages without any difficulties. Bomb is... I mean, it's fantasy seal, do you really expect it to do anything other than deal small amount of damage to boss?
Struggles with bosses, but removal of need to stay under boss for DPS and easy stage experience allow to get UFOs much easier.
Oh, and in SA and UFO for some reason ReimuA and ReimuB swapped their places, i don't know what was the reason for that. and SA ReimuB sucks too.

MarisaA - Last time we'll see piercing lasers appear in Touhou, with them making return only in 17. I mean, it's same as ReimuA... Except 3.0 hitbox makes dodging harder, and her limited range ends up only making stages worse. However, i find her piercing nature of lasers being more useful then ReimuA's ♥♥♥♥♥♥ needles, so she can at least perform somewhat better, especially when it comes to taking down UFOs, that due to piercing nature go down fairly quickly. Bomb is... As good as modern master spark could get.

Yuuka- i mean MarisaB - You expected to see missiles, don't you? Well, this one... *drum roll* Is a shotgun shot type! This means, that not only she has decent stage performance, but also encourages aggressive playstyle due to shotgun-based nature with ability to be capable of dealing huge damage while close to enemy.
And, at 3.00 power, you gain ability to shoot backwards, which is... a neat feature, but nothing really useful.
Oh, and her bomb ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ SUCKS! short duration, mediocre damage, and really useful only for screen clearing or deathbombing.

SanaeA - Homing snakes that deal more damage than ReimuB's amulets, but as downside cannot move down. Yet another busted shot type...
Oh, and bomb lasts ages too, while also allowing to graze bullets while it's active, which may somewhat help in score runs?

SanaeB - Yet another shotgun shot type! Her frogs deal great damage, have splash damage, and i'm sure when focused you end up repositioning all frogs to front, allowing to maintain good DPS even at bosses.
Bomb lasts ages too. This shot type is actually kinda busted, not gonna lie... To the point where 90% of recorded 1CC runs use only her, same goes to SanaeB, which is why i prefer using ReimuB in this one.

Reimu has smaller hitbox than other characters.
As you can see, ReimuA and MarisaA end up being worst, SanaeB/A and ReimuB being the best, and MarisaB falling into middle due to her stage performance.
Also, i don't really like playable Sanae in this game due to her power, if being honest.

Soundtrack:
I mean, it's Touhou OST, why you would expect it to be bad?
Just listen to menu theme, that intro always gets me.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PeHvKVbE3aw

Overall, a Touhou game that can be pretty damn frustrating at times, and it's mechanics clearly show that you have to be above specific skill level to get that 1 Credit Clear.
Oh, and starting from this game, resources collected with point-of-collection line (POC) will always be collected at their max value, even if player has left the POC.